1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2009 - 2010

Announcement - Agenda - Paper Presentations - Kickstart Sessions - Panel

This session will give a brief overview of the Cell Broadband EngineTM (Cell BE) a new processor architecture which extends the 64-bit Power Architecture technology. The Cell Broadband Engine Architecture has been designed to support a wide range of applications including digital media, entertainment, communications, medical imaging, security and surveillance, and HPC workloads. The first implementation, the CBE processor, is a single-chip multiprocessor with nine processor elements operating on a shared, coherent memory. Each CBE comprises a power processor element (PPE) and eight synergistic processor elements (SPEs). The PPE contains a 64-bit Power Architecture core called PPU or PX, and it can run 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems and applications. It also manages system resources and SPE threads. It supports both the PowerPC instruction set and the Vector/SIMD Multimedia Extension instruction set. The SPEs are independent processor elements which are optimized for running SIMD applications. To an application programmer, the CBE processor looks like a 9-way coherent multicore.

We'll look at some of the following key areas:

• Application areas and examples
• Digital Media focus area (Media & Entertainment)
• Programming Model overview
• Cell Software Development Kit
• QS20 Cell Blade Product Announcement and Future Products Roadmap